Cooperativist miners in Llallagua

Llallagua is a 35,000–strong mining community situated seven hours drive from La Paz in the northern part of Potosi region. Well, this is not quite right. First was Siglo XX, a tin mine that gave work to thousands of miners and millions of dollars to people like Patino, the richest man in the world back in the 1930s. This mining camp, that’s all it was, was soon shadowed by Llallagua, the town that grew to service the needs of men in dangerous jobs and short life expectancies with money to burn (you get the idea). Eventually Llallagua grew to engulf the mining camp and walking through its streets you would not know you are entering into miners’ living quarters were it not for the characteristic housing – tiny, without water supply, or, in its day, sanitation – arranged in straight rows and resembling nothing more than a concentration camp. Now, where have I seen something like this? I know: Viloco, another mining camp high in the Andes that is home to 2,500 people, and, I have to say, the extreme corner of Runcorn in the UK.

Reaching this God-forsaken place is no small feat as the road, asphalted all the way past Oruro eventually reaches Huanuni - another important mining community an the site of many a political battle - before taking a sharp left up the mountain and a dirt track that keeps climbing for what seems the heavens. Close to an altitude of 5,000 metres, where the air is thin and despite the deep blue skies and the shining sun the cold is apparent, we stop for an all too quick gaze at nature before heading down to our final destination.

Llallagua is not what you could consider beautiful. At the entrance to the town all we can see are the artificial hills created by slagheaps, the remnants of excavated mountain in the form of poor grade mineral piled 20 or 30 metres high. Beyond the bend on the track, the first glimpse of the town is provided by a succession of pools in steps that follow downhill and serve the purpose of manually extracting the mineral brought out in individual sacks by miners on their backs. This is a process of mineral extraction that seems to have changes little in five centuries.

It wasn’t always like this. Siglo XX mine was a key mining town and workplace in Bolivia until, in 1985, following to the letter the recommendations of the International Monetary Fund to stem a runaway inflation, the state basically gave away to private investors all aspects of the economy under its control. Private investors came, chose the richest pickings, and where investment was needed, they simply walked away. The social consequences of this ‘Silent Revolution’ as Duncan Green put it in a very readable book, were enormous. Not only were thousands made unemployed, many of them left the mines and relocated to the area of Chapare where, lacking any alternative economic activity, they became coca growers (tell that to the highly skilled economic advisers who designed the privatisation policy).

However, many miners simply stayed behind and became cooperativistas. The name belies the reality of their work. Without state employer, these miners were simple left with the same mines they had always worked in, except this time without a salary, a pension, an insurance, equipment to do their job….All that was left for them to do was to continue to work in the mine, as individuals, and to sell any mineral they brought out to middle men. This they continue to do today but the consequences of that policy are there for all to see. Mechanisation of extraction and refinement have simply disappeared and miners have gone back one century at least in their working methods, hammering away at the rock with their bare hands. Safety standards are virtually inexistent. In many cases, it isn’t clear who is and who isn’t a miner, who is in the mine and who is out at any given time, how much dynamite or when it is used….you can imagine that if mining is in itself dangerous, these practices make it lethal.

Progress? Not something one could say for mining practices in places like Siglo XX.